Wall Draft 2

# The Ballad of Foundry City: Fear, Labour, and the Wall

## Part One: Before the Dawn

The candle had burned down to a stub, its flame guttering in the draught that crept through the gaps in the window frame. Anya watched it flicker and dance, casting shadows that climbed the walls of the small room like ghosts.

Beside her, Meia slept.

Her daughter was curled beneath the thin blanket, one small hand tucked under her cheek, her dark hair spread across the pillow like spilled ink. She was seven years old. Too young to work the Wall. Not too young to understand what it meant.

Anya reached out and smoothed a strand of hair from Meia's forehead. Her daughter's skin was warm, feverish. She had been coughing for three days now, a deep, rattling cough that shook her small frame and left her gasping for breath. The air in Foundry City was thick with soot and smoke, and it settled in the lungs of the young and the old first, like sediment at the bottom of a river.

Anya had tried to get medicine. She had gone to the dispensary after her shift, waited in line for two hours, only to be told that supplies were low. Priority was given to active workers. Children would have to wait.

"How long?" Anya had asked.

The clerk had shrugged. "A week. Maybe two. Depends on the next shipment."

A week. Meia's cough would be worse by then. It might have spread to her chest, settled into her lungs, become something that no medicine could cure.

But there was nothing Anya could do. Nothing except work her shift, meet her quota, and hope that when the medicine finally arrived, it would not be too late.

She looked at her daughter's face, so peaceful in sleep, and felt the familiar weight settle over her chest. Fear. Exhaustion. Helplessness. The daily burden of every parent in Foundry City.

Across the room, Tomos stirred in his narrow bed. He was fourteen, gangly and thin, his limbs still too long for his body. He had started on the lower scaffolds three days ago, and already his hands were blistered and bleeding. He tried to hide them from Anya, but she had seen the way he winced when he picked up his cup, the way he held his fork awkwardly at dinner.

He should have had another year before the Wall claimed him. Another year of childhood, of school, of something other than stone and hammers and dust. But the new quota had changed everything.

The new quota changed everything.

Anya stood slowly, careful not to disturb Meia, and crossed to the small table by the stove. There was bread left from yesterday, hard and stale, and half a jar of watered-down jam. She cut three thin slices and set them on chipped plates. It would have to be enough. Their ration coupons were almost gone, and payday was still four days away.

She filled the kettle with water from the bucket and set it on the stove to boil. The stove was ancient, its metal sides dented and blackened, but it still worked. That was more than many families could say.

While the water heated, Anya pulled on her work clothes. Thick canvas trousers, patched at the knees. A heavy shirt, stained with old sweat and dust. Boots that had belonged to her father, too large for her feet, stuffed with rags to make them fit. The uniform of every Wall builder in Foundry City.

She caught sight of herself in the small, cracked mirror that hung beside the door. Her face was thin, her cheekbones sharp beneath pale skin. Her eyes were shadowed, ringed with the purple-grey bruises of chronic exhaustion. Her hair, once thick and glossy, was now brittle and dull, tied back in a rough plait.

She was thirty-two years old. She looked fifty.

The kettle whistled. Anya made weak tea and poured it into three cups. She set one beside Tomos's bed and another on the table for Meia, then wrapped her own hands around the third and let the warmth seep into her fingers.

Through the thin walls, she could hear the sounds of the tenement waking. Coughing. Crying. The shuffle of feet on worn floorboards. The clang of pots and the murmur of tired voices. Two hundred families lived in this building, stacked one on top of the other like stones in the Wall. Two hundred families, all doing the same thing: rising before dawn, eating what little they had, preparing for another day of labour.

Anya sipped her tea and looked at her children. Tomos, already stirring, already reaching for his boots. Meia, still sleeping, her small chest rising and falling with each shallow breath.

This was what she was building the Wall for. To keep them safe. To give them a future. To protect them from the Wastelanders and the chaos beyond.

That was what they said.

That was what she had always believed.

But lately, standing at the base of that massive, endless structure, feeling the weight of the hammer in her hands and the ache in her bones, Anya had begun to wonder.

What were they really building?

And for whom?

Tomos sat up, rubbing his eyes. He saw the tea waiting for him and reached for it carefully, using both hands to lift the cup. His fingers were wrapped in dirty bandages, already stained with blood.

"Mam," he said softly. "You should have woken me earlier."

"You needed the sleep."

"I'll be late."

"You'll be on time." Anya kept her voice firm. "Drink your tea. Eat your bread. We'll walk together."

Tomos nodded and took a small sip. He did not complain about the taste, about the thinness of it. He had learned not to complain about anything.

Meia stirred and opened her eyes. She saw her mother and smiled, a small, fragile thing that made Anya's heart ache.

"Mam," she whispered. "Is it morning?"

"Not quite yet, cariad. But soon." Anya crossed to the bed and helped Meia sit up. "How do you feel?"

"Tired."

"I know, love. Drink this. It'll help."

Meia wrapped her small hands around the cup and drank obediently. She did not ask for food. She knew there was not much left.

Anya smoothed her daughter's hair and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Mrs Parry will be by to check on you. You stay in bed, understand? No getting up unless you need the privy."

"Will you come home early?"

"I'll come home as soon as I can."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

It was a lie. Anya would not be home until long after dark. The new quota meant longer hours, fewer breaks, no mercy. But Meia needed the promise, needed the comfort of it, and so Anya gave it to her.

She kissed her daughter once more, then stood and pulled on her coat. It was threadbare and patched, but it kept out some of the cold.

Tomos finished his tea and stood as well. He was nearly as tall as Anya now, but he still moved like a child, uncertain and awkward in his own body.

Together, they stepped out into the dark hallway. The tenement was a maze of narrow corridors and steep staircases, the walls stained with damp and soot. Other families were emerging from their rooms, pulling on coats and scarves, their faces drawn and grey in the dim light.

No one spoke. There was nothing to say. They were all going to the same place.

The Wall.

***

Outside, the city was a landscape of shadows. The streets were narrow and crooked, lined with buildings that leaned towards each other like old men sharing secrets. Smoke poured from the foundry stacks, thick and black, blotting out the stars. The air smelled of coal and metal and something else, something sour and chemical that caught in the throat.

Anya and Tomos joined the stream of workers making their way towards the Wall. Hundreds of them, moving through the darkness in silence, their footsteps echoing on the cobblestones.

The Wall loomed ahead, a vast black shape that swallowed the horizon. Even in the darkness, it was visible, impossibly tall, impossibly wide. It dominated everything. It was the centre of Foundry City, the reason for its existence, the structure around which every life revolved.

Anya had been building it for twelve years. She had started when she was twenty, fresh from school, her body still strong and her mind still full of the propaganda they taught. The Wall was necessary. The Wall was salvation. The Wall stood between Foundry City and the chaos of the Waste, where the Wastelanders roamed, desperate and savage, waiting for any sign of weakness.

She had believed it then. She had lifted her hammer with pride, feeling the satisfaction of stone fitting into place, of being part of something larger than herself.

But twelve years was a long time. Long enough to watch her father fall from a scaffold, his body broken on the stones below. Long enough to see friends and neighbours worked into the ground, their bodies used up and discarded. Long enough to wonder why the Wall never seemed to get any closer to finished.

Long enough to start asking questions.

They reached the work yard as the first grey light of dawn began to creep over the rooftops. The yard was enormous, a flat expanse of packed earth and stone, surrounded by scaffolding and cranes and mountains of raw material. In the centre, the Wall rose like a great grey tooth, its surface rough and pitted, scarred with the marks of a thousand hammers.

The workers assembled in rows, two hundred strong, their faces hidden behind scarves and goggles. Anya found her place in the second row. Tomos went to the lower scaffolds, where the younger workers laboured under the supervision of the senior builders.

Anya watched him go, his thin shoulders hunched against the cold, and felt something twist in her chest.

He was too young. Too small. The work would break him.

But there was nothing she could do.

The Foreman's platform stood at the edge of the yard, a raised structure of wood and metal that put him above the workers. He was already there, a dark shape against the lightening sky, his face invisible beneath the brim of his hat.

The whistle blew. Sharp. Commanding.

The workers straightened. Tools were lifted. Heads were bowed.

And then the call came, amplified through the speakers mounted on the scaffolding.

"What keeps us safe?"

Two hundred voices answered as one.

"The Wall we raise!"

"What holds back the dark?"

"The Wall we raise!"

"What stands between us and the Waste?"

"The Wall we raise!"

The whistle shrieked again. The hammers fell.

The work began.

***

## Part Two: The Rhythm of Stone

Anya swung her hammer in time with the workers around her. The motion was automatic, ingrained in her muscles after twelve years of repetition. Lift. Swing. Strike. Lift. Swing. Strike. The rhythm was everything. Break the rhythm, and you broke yourself.

The stone beneath her hammer cracked and split, sending up clouds of dust that caught in her throat and stung her eyes despite the goggles. Around her, two hundred hammers rose and fell in unison, creating a sound like thunder, like a heartbeat, like the pulse of the city itself.

This was what Foundry City was built on. Not the ore from the mines, not the steel from the foundries, but this: the endless, brutal labour of bodies bent to the service of stone.

The Wall had been rising for as long as anyone could remember. Anya's grandfather had worked on it. Her father. Now her and her brother. Soon, perhaps, Meia. Generation after generation, breaking their backs to build something that never seemed to reach completion.

The quota was the measure of everything. Each worker had a daily target, a number of stones to be shaped and laid. Meet the quota, and you earned your wage and your ration coupons. Fail, and you were marked as an idler.

Idlers were sent beyond the Wall.

No one knew exactly what that meant. No one who went beyond the Wall ever came back. But everyone knew it was a death sentence. The Wastelanders would find you. The elements would kill you. You would die alone in the dust and the darkness, and no one would remember your name.

At least, that was what they said.

The new quota was impossible. Everyone knew it. Forty per cent higher than before, with no increase in workers, no improvement in tools or materials. Just the same exhausted bodies, pushed harder, worked longer, driven by fear.

The Foreman had announced it three days ago, standing on his platform with his arms crossed and his voice cold.

"Intelligence reports indicate increased Wastelander activity along the northern border," he had said. "The threat is growing. The Wall must rise faster. Your quota has been adjusted accordingly."

No one had protested. Protest was dangerous. Protest marked you as a doubter, and doubters became idlers.

But the cost had been immediate. The elderly were called back to work, their bent backs and trembling hands barely able to lift the tools. Children were recruited from the schools, their thin arms struggling with the weight of the stones. Tomos had been one of them.

Anya's hammer struck the stone with particular force, and a larger piece than intended broke away. She cursed under her breath and reached for her chisel to shape it properly. Every mistake cost time. Time cost quota. Quota cost everything.

"Steady."

The voice came from beside her. Marged, a woman in her fifties with silver-threaded hair and hands like leather. She had worked the Wall longer than anyone else still living, thirty-four years of unbroken service. Her face was lined and weathered, her back permanently bent from decades of stooping over stone.

"I'm steady," Anya muttered.

"No, you're not. You're angry. Anger makes you sloppy." Marged's own hammer rose and fell with mechanical precision. "Save it for when it matters."

"When does it matter?"

"You'll know."

Anya wanted to ask what that meant, but the whistle blew for silence. No talking during work hours. No wasted breath. Every ounce of energy was to be directed towards the Wall.

The morning stretched on, grey and cold and endless. The sun rose somewhere beyond the smoke, but its light barely penetrated the gloom. Foundry City existed in a permanent twilight, the sky perpetually stained with the exhalations of the foundries.

Anya's arms began to ache. Then burn. Then go numb. She pushed through it, as she always did, letting her mind drift away from her body, away from the pain.

She thought about Meia. About the cough that rattled in her daughter's chest. About the medicine that would not come in time. About the future that seemed to narrow with every passing day, like a tunnel collapsing stone by stone.

What kind of life was this? What kind of future?

The propaganda broadcasts told them they were building towards something better. That the Wall, once complete, would usher in an age of prosperity and peace. That their sacrifices would be rewarded, their labour honoured.

But the Wall was never complete. It simply grew taller, wider, longer, consuming more lives and more labour with every passing year.

And the promised prosperity never came.

The whistle blew for the mid-morning break. The hammers stilled. The workers slumped where they stood, too exhausted to move far. Anya pulled off her goggles and wiped the dust from her face with a cloth that was already grey with old sweat and grit.

Her hands were shaking. They always shook now, a fine tremor that never quite went away. In a few more years, the tremor would spread to her arms, her legs. Eventually, she would no longer be able to hold a hammer. And then she would be sent beyond the Wall, like her father, like everyone who could no longer work.

She looked across the yard and found Tomos. He was sitting on a pile of stones, his head in his hands, his shoulders heaving. Even from a distance, she could see the blood on his bandages.

Anya started towards him, but Marged caught her arm.

"Don't," the older woman said quietly.

"He's hurt."

"We're all hurt. The Foreman is watching. If he sees you coddling the boy, he'll mark him as weak. They'll take him off the scaffolds and send him to the sorting yards."

"The sorting yards?" Anya's stomach clenched. The sorting yards were where the smallest children worked, separating broken stone from usable material. The dust there was even thicker, the air even more poisonous. Children who went to the sorting yards rarely lived past twenty.

"He's stronger than he looks," Marged said. "Let him prove it."

Anya watched her brother for a moment longer, then forced herself to look away. Marged was right. Showing concern would only make things worse.

A woman approached with a bucket of water and a ladle. She moved down the rows, offering each worker a single cup. Anya drank gratefully, though the water was warm and tasted of rust.

"Thank you," she said.

The woman nodded and moved on. Her face was blank, emptied of expression. Anya recognised that look. It was the look of someone who had stopped feeling anything, who had learned to simply endure.

"They're killing us," Marged said quietly, staring up at the Wall. "This new quota. It's not sustainable. We're working faster than they can supply the stone. Faster than the scaffolds can hold. Someone will fall soon. Then someone else. Then ten more."

"Then we work slower."

"And break the quota?" Marged's eyes were hard. "You know what happens to idlers."

Anya did know. Everyone knew.

"Three generations of my family have built this Wall," Anya said, almost to herself. "My grandfather. My father. Me. And soon Tomos. How many more generations? When does it end?"

"It doesn't," Marged said simply. "That's the point."

"What do you mean?"

But before Marged could answer, the whistle blew. The break was over. The workers picked up their tools and returned to their places.

Anya lifted her hammer. The weight of it felt heavier than it had that morning, as though the stone itself were pulling her down.

"What keeps us safe?" The call echoed across the yard.

"The Wall we raise."

The hammers fell.

And somewhere high above the noise and dust, somewhere Anya could barely hear over the crash and clatter of the work yard, someone began to sing.

***

## Part Three: The Singer's Question

The voice was thin at first, barely audible over the hammering. A single thread of melody weaving through the crash and clatter of the work yard. But it was there, persistent, and slowly, heads began to turn.

Anya paused mid-swing and looked up.

On the highest scaffold, a figure stood silhouetted against the grey sky. A man, tall and lean, holding no hammer. He stood with his arms spread wide, his head tilted back, and he sang.

The song had no words, not at first. It was just a melody, rising and falling like breath, like wind, like something half-remembered from a dream. It was nothing like the propaganda chants. It had no rhythm for hammers, no call for response. It simply existed, fragile and defiant, in the space between the stones.

The Foreman's whistle shrieked. "Back to work! No singing! Back to work!"

But the man on the scaffold did not stop.

Slowly, impossibly, the melody began to shift. Words emerged, soft and strange, curling around the notes like smoke.

*Who told you to be afraid?

Who taught you to bow your head?

Who built this wall of silence,

And called it safety instead?*

The hammering faltered. One by one, the workers stopped and looked up. The silence spread like a stain across the yard, thick and dangerous.

The Foreman was shouting now, his face red, his voice cracking with fury. "Get that man down! Get him down now!"

Two guards scrambled up the scaffold, their boots clanging on the metal. But the man did not run. He stood his ground, still singing, his voice growing stronger with every line.

*The Wall is not your saviour.

The Wall is not your friend.

The Wall is just a story

They tell you, without end.*

They dragged him down. His voice cut off mid-note as they wrenched his arms behind his back and hauled him towards the Forema